Congressional candidate Joe Kent debates the issues with U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez at KATU studios in Portland on Monday night, Oct. 7, 2024. (Amanda Cowan/The Columbian)
President Donald Trump on Monday appointed Joe Kent, a former Army Special Forces soldier and two-time Republican candidate for a congressional seat in southwest Washington, to be director of The National Counterterrorism Center.
“As a soldier, Green Beret, and CIA officer, Joe has hunted down terrorists and criminals his entire adult life,” Trump wrote on X. “Joe will help us keep America safe by eradicating all terrorism, from the jihadists around the World, to the cartels in our backyard.”
A short time later, Kent responded on the social media platform.
“It’s an honor to serve our nation again, time to keep our nation safe & strong!” he wrote.
Trump’s announcement comes three months after Kent lost a bid for a U.S. House seat for a second time to Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez.
The first run came in 2022. Kent, an ardent Trump supporter, beat incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler in the 3rd Congressional District primary. He and other conservative Republicans targeted Herrera Beutler for her vote to impeach Trump in 2021.
But that fall, Kent couldn’t hold the seat for Republicans, losing to Gluesenkamp Perez, a relative unknown, by 2,629 votes in what was considered one of the biggest upsets of that year’s elections.
In their rematch in November, Gluesenkamp Perez beat Kent by 16,000 votes.
Kent is an Oregon native. He grew up in Portland and, at 18, enlisted in the U.S. Army. He had 11 combat deployments and served as a Ranger and Special Forces soldier. He has a degree in strategic studies and defense analysis from Norwich University. In 2020, he served as a foreign affairs advisor to the Trump campaign.
In 2019, his wife, Shannon Kent, a Navy cryptologic technician, was killed by an Islamic State group suicide bomber in northeastern Syria. Kent remarried in 2023 and lives in Yacolt.
Kent will lead an agency founded in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks and tasked with gathering and analyzing information to help thwart terrorism. He will oversee a staff of more than 1,000 people and answer to the director of national intelligence.
The appointment is subject to Senate confirmation.